After yesterday's pop up storm, it got stupid humid. I paced myself. In the early morning hours, I trimmed back some lemon balm, Melissa officinalis. Since it covers a good percentage of my yard, no loss. More compost for next year.

After the rain, I noticed the deer had been nibbling on my cucumbers. I really want to make pickles this year. No, you don't get to eat my food! I took my tinker toy PVC pipes and made a house around the cucumbers. I used tulle for the walls. I am glad I spent the huge amount of money on the clips to go over the PVC. They've lasted a long time. I had to weed to even get through that area. More lemon balm and bunches of bittercress and curly dock. No, you can't get the roots out with curly dock. I did the best I could. There's a lot more to do.

Knowing that there is a deer about, I also shored up the front garden fence. In places, it is only 2 feet high which can easily be stepped over. I took apart a previous fence made of metal conduit. The wire grid is 6 ft by 4 ft. I had used it with 6 ft going across in the backyard. This time, I reconfigured it to 4 ft wide and 6 ft high. I had to cut down a piece of conduit to fit. Sawing with a hack saw in the heat is not for the faint of heart. I was dripping. But I have my fence. I installed it with rebar and zip ties. I added a secondary fence inside the circle with the old panels. Deer are hesitant to jump fences when they can't see a landing spot. If you can't manage a 6 or 8 ft high fence, a double fence of 4 ft high, spaced a ways apart can work. Near the place with the free pallets, several ingenious gardeners did just that. Their yards are flat. Mine is not. It is too easy for a deer to jump things on a downward slope. I digress.

Now I have a spot and a trellis to plant my stragglers. There is a watermelon that needs a home and a honeynut squash. Four feet wide should provide just the right amount of space. Since today is another stupidly hot day,, I'll wait to plant them into the ground until tonight. The forecast is for 90 degrees today and 84 degrees tomorrow with rain and thunderstorms.

There's work to be done even in the heat. Time to do it while it's still cool.

Yes, there is horrific flooding in Texas and now in North Carolina. It just started pouring buckets where I live in Pennsylvania. We had a three day heat dome. I won't comment on the blame game for those dead. If you want to do that, start with Exxon Mobile. The SMOC has reversed. The SMOC is the southern hemisphere version of the AMOC. Instead of saltier water near the bottom of the ocean, it's near the top, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere instead of capturing carbon. In other words, it reversed direction. Expect more of the same. Fortunately, the ESA is studying it and they haven't lost funding. We are in for a rough ride.

My heart and sympathy goes out to those who lost loved ones in the flooding, both in TX and NC. Without FEMA, those who lost their homes are kind of SOL. I have no words. NC is still ongoing.

As for myself, my baby skunks romp daily between 8 and 10 am. It does make it hard to do much out back. An awful lot of weeding needs to happen. A lot!

I worked on harvesting potatoes. The early potatoes are a mixed bag. The first 6 or so bags only yielded 3 pounds. A lot had been lost to too much rain or late frost. They weren't very hardy to begin with. The potatoes I started from eyes were especially weak. The ones that had been properly chitted were great. We'll see how the midsummer potatoes do. Apparently, I have a good Swiss chard plant in one of the potato pots. I won't know if that yielded potatoes or not until much later this year.

The extra soil in the grow bags from the potato harvest was used to pot extra tomatoes, ones that didn't fit in the garden. I don't have a place for them inside a fence so they have to take their chances with the deer. It is possible that the skunks are keeping the deer at bay, but that didn't work last year so who knows? Maybe there are just fewer deer.

My extra sweet potatoes got put into grow bags too. It might be too late to plant them for a good yield. The hot, wet weather should be good for them. I got a giant grow bag from a seed swap earlier this year for the sweet potatoes. I also have an old canning pot with a rusted out bottom. I filled that up and planted Lakota squash. It's 90 to 100 days until our frost, so it should be good. I checked to package for Days-to-Maturity. I planted more cucumbers from seed after I pulled the peas out. I remembered to also plant radishes to deter the squash and bean beetles. I did see one of those striped buggers out there. It flew away before I could get it. I have three butternut plants in the mandala garden.

With the weeds I pulled yesterday around the blueberries, I had space to pop in a few plants that have yet to find a home. I transplanted a zucchini and a crook neck summer squash. The rain started pouring down just as I got them into the ground. More rain is predicted for tomorrow.

I still have an assortment of herbs and flowers that desperately need a place somewhere in the ground. My whole garden does come from seed, not garden center plants. I'm looking to add new beds for next year. I have a lot of work ahead of me to achieve that goal.

For right now, I am content. I don't think I will reach my potato goal but I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. The large plastic pots with new seed potatoes are doing great. A sprinkle of feather meal helped too. I'm trying not to spend every dime on gardening so I am looking for ways to avoid buying soil, soil amendments, and gimmicks. I used old tomato supports on the potatoes. It worked well. It might be worth investing in more pots next year. It's not like they go bad, but 10 is not enough. I am also toying with digging a trench for them in the way back if the soil is dig-able. The deer do not bother them. Ground hogs don't either. Containers just make it easier to harvest. Some experimentation is in order.

That's it for this week. Sun's back out and it's very humid now. Time to plan dinner.